TMCnews Featured Article

Lasik MD is a leading provider of laser vision correction in Canada. The company currently has 21 clinics in Canada and one in the U.S.

Up until 2006, the company was using a diverse mix of communications solutions, with separate PBXs deployed at each location (at the time the company had only 13 clinics). In addition the company was using a Nortel (News - Alert) BCM 400 system in its main contact center in Montreal.

As the company grew, management became aware of the limitations of these different systems. Not only were these separate systems cumbersome and costly to maintain, they also didn’t provide the features and functionality the company really needed.

For example, there were problems in terms of integrating these disparate systems with the contact center, to create a fully unified system -- plus there were limitations in terms of the contact center system’s scalability.

The scalability issue was a particularly serious problem for Lasik MD, as the company makes heavy use of broadcast and print advertising about its surgeries. These advertisements result in periods of heavy or “peak” call volume in the contact center – and the agents must be able to provide prompt service during these periods.

“Expanding the BCM system meant we had to purchase more hardware, and we didn’t want to rely on a hardware-based system to fuel the growth of our contact center,” said Dr. Paul Lapierre of Lasik MD in a customer case study posted to Interactive Intelligence’s Web site.

He added that the reporting module for the BCM was “limited.”

“We could get metrics on overall performance, but not in real-time, and not for each agent,” he said. “We had no way of knowing how many calls each agent answered, or how much time they spent not taking calls. In addition, our reporting server did not always synch properly with the BCM system, resulting in a loss of historical data.”

The cost and difficulty in integrating the disparate telephony systems was also a problem. Having separate phone systems at each location meant that about 30 percent of all calls were being answered by clinic staff.

“Our staff needed to spend more time with in-office patients, instead of answering calls,” Lapierre said. “There was also no recording capability, which the Lasik MD staff knew they needed for training and quality assurance.”

The company knew it wanted a VoIP-based system that could not only scale but also unify all of its locations. In addition the company wanted a solution that could be easily integrated with other key systems, including its CRM system.

“We wanted a solution that was user-friendly for both our clinic staff and IT administrators,” Lapierre said. “With our existing system, if we wanted to change IVR menus, we needed to work with a third party.”

Lasik MD found what it wanted in Interactive Intelligence’s (News - Alert) Customer Interaction Center solution. With this VoIP-based, “all-in-one” contact center system, the company has been able to seamlessly unify its communications and dramatically increase scalability, as well as gain the advanced features and functionality it needed.

With CIC’s multimedia queuing capabilities, Lasik MD can now manage all types of contacts – including phone, email, fax, Web chat and SMS – via a single queue. With the old system, there was no way to route email and fax inquiries into the queue – thus they were managed separately, with some contact center employees answering emails and faxes on an ad-hoc basis. The best they could do was get responses back to customers within 24 hours of receipt. But with the new system in place, agents are responding to emails and faxes much faster, typically within a few hours.

In addition, the CIC system has opened up opportunities for Lasik MD to tap into new business models – including the much-coveted home-based agent model.

“We were constrained by the size of our contact center offices in the past, so we couldn’t even think about adding more agents as we grew,” Lapierre said. “With CIC, we can easily bring on new agents without worrying about office space.”

To download a free copy of the customer case study and learn more about how Interactive Intelligence’s CIC solution improved Lasik MD’s operations, click here.

Patrick Barnard is a senior Web editor for TMCnet, covering call and contact center technologies. He also compiles and regularly contributes to TMCnet e-Newsletters in the areas of robotics, IT, M2M, OCS and customer interaction solutions. To read more of Patrick's articles, please visit his columnist page.